Comments on SPD, King County Jail Settle Another Brutality Case

I wonder what's got the city is such a settling mood.

Does it look bad for the city to allow five or more years with no effective public oversight and then agree to huge pay raises in exchange for effective public oversight?

It's almost as if they knew they haven't done something they knew should have done.

What do you expect to happen if you call a police officer / jail guard a faggot?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that Nebinger was either in Pioneer Square or one of the equally classy joints in Belltown. Maybe Belltown Billiards?

Nebinger sounds like a first-class toilet bowl, and will no doubt be intimately acquainted with many, many different cops and jail guards in his hopefully short life.

Take note, scallywags: Keep your mouth shut when you're arrested and in jail.

Why don't the decent people like packratt get the big money?

6 mil in attorney's fee + 700K in payments?

$6.7 million/800k seattle residents = approx. $8/resident.

Well, thanks a lot for the math, Max. I want my $8 back.

John Cocktosin wrote:

What do you expect to happen if you call a police officer / jail guard a faggot?

I expect the reaction to be the same as if he had said just about any other nonsense. Our police have a high-stress job. Part of the qualification for doing that job well is to remain calm and professional in the face of insults from some jackass. That we're paying to settle out of court because some cop couldn't keep his cool is a strong indication that the cop needs to find a different job. We should fire him.

It's not okay for you or I to beat someone because he tossed a juvenile insult at us. (That John thinks it is okay does not make it so, it just makes him equally juvenile.) It's even less appropriate for someone in such a position of authority -- and with such potential for abuse -- as a cop or jail guard to do so.

Phil M

Reread the article. Dude was punched out by a jail guard, not a police officer. And yes, there's a difference. Hard to take your opinion seriously when you don't know that.

Snort: I was responding to John's comment, not to the story. I apologize if my quoting John did not make this sufficiently clear. He asked about "a cop or a jail guard".

As for my suggestion that the City's settlement indicates a cop needs to be fired, that was a mistake. Substitute "guard" for "cop" and the rest stands.

I'm tired of this hillbilly "he got what he had coming" attitude that appears every time someone dares to mouth off to someone in law enforcement or the criminal justice system.

This could be a trend. A student on the Seattle Central student was recently arrested in a violent manner (witnesses disagree as to whether he 'deserved it' or not).

One activist group and some lefty newspapers are calling it "police brutality." Will this become the next case? Or is Julio Hernandez just lucky if someone can afford to bail him out for $75,000?

Just a week before that, a South Seattle youth won a $269,000 in an excessive force case against the SPD.

Besides the ever-present concerns about racial profiling, can our regional government really afford to treat citizens this way, even if someone pays Hernandez's bail?